


Inverted Stage

by InfinityIllusion



Category: Bleach
Genre: (but like seriously), Alternate Universe - Time Travel, M/M, Soul merging, Time Travel Fix-It, Urahara Kisuke has a conscience, history popped up, low-key angst, the author is concerned about the stability of Ichigo's soul, these two are pretty fluffy with their relationship I love it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 20:38:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14776868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InfinityIllusion/pseuds/InfinityIllusion
Summary: In 200 years, Soul Society hasn't changed much -- still a lot of prejudice, still a lot of ignoring problems they created, and still getting invaded and having Ichigo and his friends save them, with everyone (especially Ichigo) getting injured in the process.Kisuke has had enough.The next time Ichigo is seriously injured, he sends those closest to the event (Ichigo and himself) back in time -- not far enough to change everything, and not soon enough to cause too many problems.Still, the show must go on.(Day 1: Time Travel AU)





	Inverted Stage

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach. Which is good considering my ability to update things, haha...ha....--.--;
> 
> Uh, this. Literally came about because I a) realized that, hair color-wise? Orange is smack in the middle of black and white (provided you have black hair at the start) and I wanted Ichigo's hair to shift depending on what abilities he was channeling (look, spontaneous hair recoloring is /canon/ what did you expect of me???), and b) I wanted Ichigo to just wreck Aizen or someone else to "Look What You Made Me Do."
> 
> Only one of those things actually happened in this fic. Oh well.
> 
> Misspelling has been found!
> 
> Massive kudos and thanks to cywscross for putting this whole event together!!!

* * *

“Just because there was yet _another_ invasion of Soul Society doesn’t mean we needed to come back,” Ichigo points out, hair fading back to orange after spitting out a mouthful of blood, although wisely keeping an arm around his previously, momentarily, horizontally bisected middle, and pulling away from Kisuke to lean against the building they’d appeared next to instead.

Kisuke simply stares at the other man.  There’s a number of things wrong about that statement, including the fact that Shiroi Zangetsu’s instantaneous regeneration is the only reason that Ichigo’s not currently bisected and therefore dead.  But, Ichigo’s heard them all before from people better suited to convincing him than Kisuke.  (Ichigo’s also debated back and forth with Kisuke on those same points, but their – well, Kisuke’s – hand was forced.  It should be fine – no, it _will_ be fine.

Kisuke can admit that he’s made mistakes in the past – it’s why he apologized to Ichigo.  Now they can maybe work things out for the better.)

Besides, they’re not going back, not if Kisuke can help it – and he can.  In any case, it’s not like there’s anything he’s found to suggest that time travel isn’t a one-way trip.

Ichigo huffs a quiet laugh, “Alright.  So. Early 1860’s Japan.  Yay, coming Meiji, also hooray Kyoto is super, super bloody. What now?”

“Well, I’ll be on the run with the Vizard, Tessai, and Yoruichi-san soon – Yoruichi-san will have grabbed one of our backup escape bags, but it wasn’t exactly very comfortable those first few decades.  The bags were meant for at most six, not eleven, and Soul Society uses ryo which isn’t what the current government uses.”  Kisuke distinctly remembers how it very much _isn’t the current currency of Japan_.

“Right.  So, what’re we going to do?”

“Well,” Kisuke smirks, “Soul Society does happen to have had a number of things made of silver – and it just so happens that silver is currently of incredibly high value, and there are a number of foreigners pouring in with an abundance of it.”

Ichigo snorts.  “So _that’s_ what you’ve got stored in one of those scrolls.”

“Pocket spaces are a wonderful intersection of science and _kidou_ , you know,” Kisuke sniffs with an affected air of hurt haughtiness.  He absolutely got the idea from some manga Ichigo made a passing comment about because he thought Kisuke could do it better, which, of course, he can and did.

Ichigo laughs, and Kisuke lets a real smile cross his lips.  It’s been a long decade or two, recently, but Ichigo’s alive and Kisuke’s alive, and everyone they come to care about is also alive, so he’ll take that as a win.

“So,” and Kisuke really wishes he had his fan at the moment to snap close to emphasize the switch back to serious topics – some habits are incredibly hard to break, even if his most recent fan is broken somewhere in the middle of his lab.  It was sacrificed for a good cause, and at least he still has his hat, no matter how much worse for the wear it is.  “Let’s get down to the docks, clean you up, change clothes, and find a ship to pretend to have disembarked from.  You’ll be playing translator, you know.”

“Yeah, yeah.  Are you being American, British, or German? Well,” Ichigo pauses, “Prussian. Whatever.”

“Hopefully American, but we’ll see what boats have come in recently.”

“As long as it’s not Dutch,” Ichigo grumbles, but he allows Kisuke to pull him off the building and onto leaning on his shoulder easily enough.

“Yes, dear.”

“Shut up, Kisuke.”

Kisuke hums.  He takes a moment to bury his face in Ichigo’s hair, before moving out of the conveniently deserted alley they’d found themselves in after coming back nearly three centuries.

At least Ichigo shouldn’t have too much trouble affecting the accent and linguistic quirks of the time. It’s about equivalent with what Seireitei used when he first invaded, after all.

~IiI~

“Kisuke!” Comes a hissed whisper from the dark.

“What?”  Kisuke is incredibly sleep deprived, stressed, and feeling far too guilty among a whole host of other negative emotions to deal with this at the moment.  It’s to the point that his hands are actually shaking, like they’ve been doing on and off for the past few days since he and the rest of his fellow fugitives have claimed refuge in the Human World.  The ryo contained in the bag Yoruichi-san had grabbed is enough to pay for food for eleven people and a number of nights at an inn for three people, but the rooms are incredibly crowded given that there are actually eleven of them, and they’ve also needed a number of bandages and medicine for the various injuries they – particularly those that had suffered from Aizen’s forced Hollowfication, sustained. It’s also just not comfortable, not with unstable powers, injuries, recent betrayal, and the sheer breadth of personalities the group contains.

(None of them – Tessai, Yoruichi-san or himself have been to the human world in too long, and with an unstable government and foreign intrusions, things have been changing far too rapidly in too short a time for them to have updated their money supply in the packs.  They can steal more money, but that’s not a long term solution and they need to settle soon, so that Kisuke can actually work on reversing the Hollowfication. And if not, if he can’t – there’s so very few things he can’t do with science, but it makes him all the more aware of what he can’t – he’ll work on helping the former captains and vice-captains control their new powers.

It’s the least he can do.)

Needless to say, he doesn’t want to deal with another person right now, even if it’s a case of mistaken identity.

“Kisuke, you ass, what the hell is going on?  Is it…? I thought you said it wouldn’t be this bad!”

Kisuke turns, and says as politely, because clearly the man who’s confused him with someone else is concerned, and as _sharply_ , because he really doesn’t have the current emotional capability to deal with this situation, as he can, “Look, I’m sorry, I think you’ve got…the wrong….”

But he ends up staring at his own face, aged and with the distinctive sutures of Benihime’s Bankai, and realizes the tremor in his hands is from _soul resonance_ of all things.

“Guess we’re merging, then,” he tells his future self.

He nods, and smiles something empty and mocking.  “It’s also easier than explaining things.”

“Right.  There’s an alley – ”

“—over there,” the older version finishes.

The other man, who causes Kisuke to do a double take because he’s staring at the doppelgänger of Shiba Kaien, only with dark eyes instead of blue, mutters something, but follows to stand in front of the alley, and that’s the last thing Kisuke remembers before the memories pour in and the two versions of his soul merge.

~IiI~

“Who the fuck is this? Did you fucking find _Shiba Kaien’s goddamned_ _reincarnation_ instead of a place to stay, you fucker?” Hiyori hisses. She’s more subdued than Kisuke or Ichigo have ever seen her – or, in Kisuke’s case, seen her since these past few weeks, and clearly, she’s the only one who’s up for actually asking, since Yoruichi-san is out making (stealing) money, even though there’s now no need….

“This is…Janus.”

Ichigo, now Janus, shoots Kisuke a supremely unimpressed look.

“Yeah, that’s me, no I’m not Kaien.  Never met ‘im.  We’re related though.  Nice to meet you.”

“Whatever, asshole. The fuck happened to your face Urahara?”

“There was an accident.”

That effectively shifts the rest of the room’s attention to Kisuke.

“A’ _accident_ ,” Shinji states, skeptical and suspicious.

“Exactly!” Kisuke now really wishes he had a fan, the better to conceal the smile that wants to play around the corners of his mouth, even as he keeps his lips from moving because he’s not that removed from his time in the _Onmitsukidou_.

(It’s disorienting, especially Ichigo.  But there’s no time for that, now.)

“Kisuke, it looks like som’one attempt’d ta carve yer face up an’ then sew’d ya up like a rag doll an’ let it all age in th’ sun fer awhile.”

Hirako always had a way with words.  Shinji always will.

“It’s not a problem anymore.”  Really, it wasn’t.  It was just a side effect of the soul merging since he’s not in one of his experimental gigai, and really, the scars probably look a lot lighter than they had before, but then it’s his own bankai’s work, so that probably has something to do with it. He just will need to keep in mind to invest in human concealing powder once it’s invented – or just make his own….he’ll just make his own – sweat, water, and blood-proof.  It won’t be the weirdest thing he’ll have made.  Maybe he can sell it in the shop….

Ichigo – Janus – nudges him before he can follow that particular train of thought too far.

He looks at the other time traveler (and where’s _his_ counterpart? But then he knows the answer anyways, oh wow…Shiba Isshin actually _married_.)

Another nudge.

“Right!  Janus has a warehouse place that we can stay in, regroup, recover, and it’s under wards.”

“An’ yer jus’ gonna, wha’, _let us_ _stay_?”

Janus shurgs. “Sure.  You need a place to stay, I’ve got room, wards, and you won’t have to worry too much about your hollows fucking up humans.”

All of the Vizard surge forward at that, “ **How do you know?** ” eight voices ask, Hollow’s close to surface and making the already loud exclamations even louder and Ichigo – Janus, sighs and draws on Zangetsu’s Hollow powers and brings them to bear against the Vizard.

“…That’ be why ya ne’er met Kaien?” Shinji asks in the otherwise resounding silence.

“Something like that.”

Hirako looks around at the rest of his fellow experiments.  “Guess ya’d know what we need than.”

~IiI~

“Welcome to Urahara Shouten,” the man behind the cash register says, bored, and continuing to flip through whatever magazine he’s reading through, despite the sunglasses covering the majority of his face.  His name tag reads, “Ashura,” and the paleness of his skin and his hair point to albinism.

“Ah, is Kisuke in?”

“He’s in the back,” the man, without looking up, waves a hand to the general area beyond the shop, “just knock before you go in.”

“Thank you.”

“Mmm,” the man replies, flipping to the next page.

Shiba Isshin, soon to be Kurosaki Isshin, moves to the back of the shop and the man who once went by Kurosaki Ichigo sighs.

Things are going to get messy from here.

(When _he’s_ the one advocating to go and assassinate Aizen, it’s a clear indicator that things are bad, and the argument had Kisuke and him tearing up the underground training facility for a week straight.  But Seireitei needs the war with Aizen because they’re so, so, so stuck in their ways, to the point that the thought of a traitor is practically anathema at that level of power, despite the Hollowfication debacle. And if they’re not prepared by Aizen, they _definitely_ won’t be ready for Yhwach.

Ichigo still personally wants to go back and kick the entirety of Seireitei’s ass for that, and for how they treated Kisuke when he initially became a captain, because, yeah, Ichigo gets not trusting people, and Soul King knows that Kisuke can be a wily, plotting asshole, but he’s not evil, and he’s callous, but he tries not to be cruel.

Kisuke sighs and points out that he _used to be_ (and that, to Ichigo, is the important part) disinterestedly callous and cruel because of that callous disinterest, but if no one was willing to give him a chance or any support, Ichigo can’t really be surprised.  It’s like all the fights he’s ever had about his hair, back when he was actually mostly human – people thought him a punk, a wanna-be _yakuza_ , and so they started fights, so Ichigo fought back, and everything just kept feeding into the vicious cycle.)

It still hurts, being back and creeping closer to his own birth.

~IiI~

Kisuke stands as witness to the marriage of Kurosaki Masaki and Kurosaki Isshin.

Ichigo, as Ashura, mans the shop and tries not to think about how weird all of this is.

(It doesn’t work and Kisuke comes back, takes one look at his face, and asks Love or Rose to come over and man the counter because yeah, no, Ichigo just can’t deal with all of this right now.

It’s the little things, you know?)

~IiI~

He asks Kisuke one night when they’re in bed and Kisuke is playing with his hair.  “Am I still going to be born?”

Wow, that’s an awkward question, even if he has to ask.

Kisuke sighs.  “I believe so.”

The, “because honestly your soul is so fucked up at this point, it’s really a wonder you’re functional, so there’s no way that this world’s you isn’t going to exist” remains unspoken but very, very clear.

“Right.”

Kisuke doesn’t quite sigh, but when he opens his mouth, Ichigo cuts him off.  “Stop apologizing, asshole.  I asked, and yeah, you manipulated stuff, but god, Kisuke, it was a desperate situation, over 300 years ago, I’ve forgiven you, it was _over 300 years ago_ , and _I’ve already fucking forgiven you already_.”

“Alight, alright.”

Ichigo rolls his eyes, and proceeds to take Kisuke apart in a way that leaves him absolutely no doubt that Ichigo not only has forgiven Kisuke mucking about with his soul, but that he also loves him.

If it also distracts Ichigo from his nebulous fears about this time’s version of himself, well, Kisuke isn’t complaining – not about that, at least.

~IiI~

Kurosaki Ichigo is born, and Ichigo knows the exact moment it happens (which is just...bizarre -- he'd never particularly cared that he was born at 3:15 PM, but now he knew) because there’s an odd ping in his soul.  Zangetsu (Shiro, that is), wants to ping back but honestly, that probably can’t be good for a newborn, so Ichigo and Zangetsu prevent him.

It’s not a bad time to start training in earnest again – there are some things that Ichigo refuses, much like Kisuke, to allow to happen as they did in their past – but, maybe it’s also time to switch back to his normal hair color and appearance when he’s manning the shop for the first time in half a century.

After all, it would’ve been nice, Ichigo muses to himself, to have had someone else with his hair, growing up, and the Shouten isn’t _that_ far from the route his mom and he used to take to his old karate lessons….

* * *

That's it, that's all she wrote.

 ~~If on the off chance someone wants more/wants to continue this, please feel free, just let me know before you do!~~  Alright, I'm apparently writing more of this.  Currently I have the first of five future scenes written, but the muse is off wandering different fandoms atm ~~(although a Merlin/Bleach crossover would definitely be interesting...)~~ and school is starting soon so I have no idea when this will be completed.  Before the end of the year is my goal, though!

As always, kudos, comments, and concrit welcome.  Please just make sure any criticisms are actually  _constructive_ , thanks!

~Fins

**Author's Note:**

> Fun facts for anyone who reads this far:
> 
> 1\. From about 1854 - 1868, Japan's government really wasn't what you'd call stable. Anyone familiar with Rurouni Kenshin will recall the Bakamatsu period. This is this period.
> 
> This was also a time where a shit ton of foreigners came and were like "oh, you want silver? For how much gold? OKAY!" And proceeded to ship a fuck ton of silver into Japan, much of it originating from one tiny little mining town in I think it's modern Central America. Alas I do not recall the name of the town ORZ.
> 
> Anyways, there's a famous Vermeer called "Woman holding a balance" and it's super likely that the silver coins in that picture were from that same place that was supplying the Europeans the silver to trade with Japan. They might've even gone to Japan, who the heck knows (the coins, not the lady, although the lady could've totally gone, it's just not as likely as the coins).
> 
> ...aka: Never underestimate how much sticks with you from history class.
> 
> 2\. Shiroi Zangetsu = White Zangetsu, heck if I know what they're calling each other to differentiate by the end of canon, I sure as heck didn't read anything but the last chapter after they got launched to the Zero Division. I regretted reading the mythic last chapter -- it doesn't exist anymore.
> 
> 3\. Japan actually admired a fair bit of Prussia including it's government, which was one of the pre-existing structures Japan borrowed from to create their Meiji government.
> 
> Also, I'm headcanoning that Ichigo and Ishida, if Ishida didn't already know German courtesy of his grandfather, learned German, to feel closer to their respective departed parent/parent figure.
> 
> 4\. Janus/Ianus -- two headed Roman deity, god of doorways and choices. Janitors used to guard doorways. Like multiple faces and guardian is why Ichigo is initially introduced as such.
> 
> Ashura in Japan is I /think/ the one that's got like four faces and a couple extra arms, but I'm doing this based on memory atm so feel free to correct me, like I literally am going straight to bed now I can't even spell.


End file.
